


Aegrotatio

by madasthesea



Series: Fure [14]
Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Illnesses, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasthesea/pseuds/madasthesea
Summary: Attolis falls ill. The country watches the Queen.





	

Eugenides was sick. Not just “cough and a sore throat” sick, either. He was so ill he couldn’t sit up on his own. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t stay awake for more than an hour at a time. He was horribly, deathly ill. 

The people who mattered knew. The kingdom didn’t, most of the court didn’t. But they guessed. Attolis didn’t make appearances in public often, but he’d been absent from the yearly Attolian harvest celebration, and a few citizens began to murmur. Suspicions grew when the Queen of Eddis arrived. Then the King of Sounis. 

Sounis could hide nothing on his scarred face and Eddis’ hands were in fists. They were afraid. The low buzz of rumor increased to a dull roar.

Attolia, for her part, seemed to the public eye to be unconcerned. She held court as always, her cool, distant demeanor unfazed. But there were whispers among the staff, the maids and cooks gossiping in corners. The king was sick, and his fever induced dreams made him scream into the quiet of the night. And the queen cried into the embroidered blankets, or so one of the king’s guard told a laundress. She spent her nights at his side, sleeping fitfully curled against his still form, her head cushioned on his gasping chest. She shouted threats to the physicians and whispered pleas to her husband and, in some of the more colorful versions, promised her love, her life, and her kingdom as long as he _woke up, please_. 

The visiting King and Queen slept in his rooms last night, one attendant reported to a raptly listening stable-hand. Sounis, upon seeing Eugenides for the first time, had been so pale the physicians thought he would pass out. Eddis had sat by the window and stared toward the sea, saying nothing her entire visit. Attolis had screamed in his sleep and the moonlight reflected off the tear tracks on her cheeks. Sounis talked to the king until he was hoarse, recounting their adventures and anything else he could think of. When they’d been forced out in the morning, they both pressed kisses to his forehead, and walked out hand in hand. 

The rumors grew, the public panic increased, the mournful air around the megaron because so omnipresent it was like walking through a graveyard. He was going to die, it seemed. No one was sure who started it, but eventually, the nights were full of candlelight as citizens gathered in the courtyards. For a week, they held vigil for Attolis. On the seventh night, the three monarchs came out onto the balcony. Sounis cried, Eddis raised a candle with them, and Attolia, for the first time the public had ever witnessed, bowed her head in prayer. 

Attolis woke the next day.


End file.
